No wonder they say kids are so expensive!

I've seen all kinds of quotes about how much a kid will cost you over the 18 years you are directly responsible for them. Cost estimates seem to start at $400,000 CAD and up!

I knew babies were pricey because of diapers, clothes that last an afternoon, daycare and toys etc but today was yet another eye opener!

Husband and I were driving the other day and thought to ourselves...Monkey is really very heavy...I wonder when she'll outgrow the weight restrictions on her car seat. Fortunately, the manual is attached to the car seat so I just had to reach back and pull it out to have a peek. Shocker! The car goes up to 22lbs. Monkey is 20lbs!

Honly smokes! That means if Monk has one big meal or extra heavy diaper, she's outgrown her car seat!!!

So her infant car seat cost over $250 and lasted only 7.5 months. We had to bolt to the baby store this afternoon and purchase another seat and plunk down another $300+ for that one!

Ouch!!! Fortunately, that seat should last till 65lbs. Unfortunately, with the rate that my little one gains weight, that probably won't last long at all! :\

Not only that, but since they 'expire' in 6 years, you really won't be able to get much use out of them for any subsequent kids you might have. Double ouch!!


I'll post a review once that one gets delivered and installed.

Babies grow...bored

Ah, I remember the days when Monkey was just a teeny thing, I could cradle her in my one arm...those were the good (and tough!) old days.

Those were the days when Monk would sleep all day (and want to part-ay all night!), she would stay put wherever I set her down, and I could go out on coffee dates with my mama friends and Monk would lie quietly in her stroller bassinet or in my arms while I managed to chat and eat.

Those days are gone.

I used to be able to entertain Monkey by jiggling my keys or making funny faces. Now she just stares at me with a furrowed brow that seems to say, "really, mom, how old do you think I am?! That's OLD NEWS."

Now I have to come up with new and exciting games...every 10 minutes. I have to put on elaborate puppet shows to be able to keep her attention long enough so I can change a diaper without having her flip over on her belly and moon me. In order to shovel a spoon of food in her mouth, I have to make helicopter noises and then fight to get the spoon back after she rips it out of my hand.

Ah, those good old days, when all Monkey wanted was food in her belly, a clean diaper on her butt and a soft place to sleep are gone. I wouldn't trade where she is right now for anything :)

Lessons learned...

Monkey grows so fast sometimes it seems like she’s literally growing out of her clothes as she wears them. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if one morning I put her in a sleeper only to find her feet poking through by the evening.

The past few months have been quite the eye-opening, parent-appreciating-sorry-for-every-bad-thing-I’ve-ever-done-mom-and-dad experience. I can summarize the experience in 14 lessons I’ve learned:

1. Baby’s cleanliness - you will start out gun-ho about baby being clean and you will change her outfit 17 times a day after she spits up. By week 2, unless the outfit is truly a biohazard, you will conclude that she’s ok to sit in it for the rest of the day. This does not make you a bad parent. This is survival.

2. Your cleanliness - cleanliness is fleeting so don’t bother – you will always be covered in baby goo. If you’re all dressed up to go out and temporarily have regained some sense of looking anything other than haggard – baby will nip this in the bud and remind you of your new role.

3. You can sleep when you’re dead – cause you ain’t sleeping now, and not for a very long time...Even if baby sleeps for a whole two hours straight, you will still startle awake, and poke her to make sure she’s ok. She will now wake up...very angry.

4. If strangers peer into the stroller to admire your lovely baby, she will inevitably and shamelessly use that exact moment to have a bowel movement...loudly.

5. You can slave away all night feeding, changing and burping baby, spend all day cleaning, bathing and comforting baby, but when daddy comes home, he’s still the favourite.

6. Babies have these amazing gummy smiles that they bust out right after they’ve vomited in your laptop that make it impossible to be annoyed.

7. You will somehow find that it is 6pm and you haven’t eaten anything other than cereal for breakfast all day. You then eat a dinner that comes out of a wrapper because it’s quick, easy and you can do it one-handed. This repeats every day until you come down with scurvy and decide that you best start eating like a normal human being.

8. You very quickly learn that some babies are very picky about certain things. Some babies (who shall remain nameless) will only make a mess in a fresh, clean diaper that has just been changed.

9. You become adept at doing everything using just one hand, your teeth, your feet, or a combination of all of the above all the while balancing sleeping baby in your other arm and quietly chanting, “stay asleep sweetie, please, please, please, stay asleep.”

10. You can dress your baby girl head to toe in pink, in a onesie that has the words “BABY GIRL” embroidered on the front, and strangers will still ask you if it’s a boy or girl.

11. If you ask your husband to use the sound machine (the "sleep sheep") to put the baby to sleep in the bedroom, you will enter said room a few minutes later to find the sound machine on, the husband asleep, and the baby wide awake.

12. Everyone will claim your baby looks exactly like some member of their family - aunt Erma, uncle Bill or cousin Larry, and yet somehow Erma, Bill, and Larry look nothing alike.

13. While you might think that you are deeply adored by your little one, never forget that the second someone dangles a plastic toy in baby's face, you cease to exist.

14. You will find your keys in the fridge, your cell phone in the laundry hamper and your wallet in the dishwasher. Simple arithmetic will baffle you. For reasons why – see number 3 above.